Jan 9, 2013 10:26 PM

Please could someone help me identify this fossil bone? I am interested to know what animal it came from and exactly what part of the skeleton? It appears to have a ball at one end, which looks like it could be the bottom of a tibia?? Thanks in advance!

I found it along the East Yorkshire coast in Easington. The coastline geology is a mix of material from all periods dumped from the last ice age, making it messy to age I guess. If it is the bottom of a tibia, it appears to be larger than a horse or cow-but this is just my very rough estimation by looking at examples online.

This is definitely bone but I'd probably refer to it as sub-fossil as opposed to fossil - as you pointed out you can clearly identify the medullary cavity (for the marrow) and the trabecular bone in the second image on your first post. I think it's mammalian but it's difficult to identify beyond that as it is so sea worn and both ends are missing which have most of the diagnostic features. It's possibly the distal portion of a humerus, or possibly distal tibia but it is difficult to tell (definitely not human though!). Hope you get an answer!

Over the years I / my sons have picked up a lot of bone material on the Holderness some of it Jurassic some Cretaceous and then the more recent as Heather pointed out as sub fossil although still very interesting especially if the bones have teeth or knife marks on them.

We have only found three lots of sub fossil bone in situe (in the peat beds) the skeleton pictured below was RCD at 1000yo and the peat bed it was found in was 2000yo

We have found quite a bit of loose recent bone but the bits I like the most are stained with peat.

In the Yorkshire museum?

Part of a Skull we picked up recently.

Inside the skull

I have no real date for them but I would think Roman to Anglo Saxon going by the history of the Holderness.